Pareja's post-game comments following loss, more injuries

Colorado Rapids Head Coach Oscar Pareja following the team's 1-0 home loss to Seattle:

On the match:

"Disappointed. Nothing else we can say about a game that I thought we controlled. A few mistakes there in the first half gave them the chance to lead the game, and then it was hard for us to react. We said this before, and I’m thinking like I’m saying this over and over, but they created chances and we couldn’t equalize. But it was a good effort for the players, I have to say that. The players tried very hard today, especially in the second half, in a game that was adverse in many senses, and we came out with no points."

On if his team was unlucky:

"I do believe in one thing: it’s work. I don’t believe in anything else. I don’t think it’s good luck or bad luck, I just think that you’ve gotta work, and it looks like sometimes the harder you work the more luck you have. That’s the only thing I believe in."

On losing Edson Buddle in warm-ups, and other injuries:

"It seems like we have to wait. There are a few things that happened today that I haven’t seen before in my life. But as a group, I thought the group and the coaches dealt with the situation very well. We jumped over that hurdle and put a team that was competitive there, and stick to a kind of different plan in the last minutes and fought through. I gotta say that it was a few players that came today and did a good job, and stepped up. But we say that we need somebody who can put the ball in the back of the net, and we have said that a lot. We continue with that weakness for sure."

On what it was that he hadn’t seen before in his life:

"I haven’t seen this many missing people with injuries. Seriously, it’s unbelievable. I had to check to see if I had seen it before – I have not, not that I remember. And then after the warm-ups, somebody comes up to the coaches and says we lost another player. Then you have to adjust, and things like that. Let’s say that it doesn’t happen often."

On making last-minute adjustments due to players being out:

"It’s difficult but I guess that’s the job. It comes with the job. I guess sometimes that’s probably the small letters that you don’t read. And I think I gotta read those too. But we did well, I thought the response from the group and the coaches in those situations were good. Because it was not just Edson [Buddle] today, it was Deshorn [Brown] yesterday and almost [Dillon] Powers, who got 40 stitches in his head yesterday afternoon and we were afraid to lose him for the game too. But you know guys that I don’t make excuses. We’ve gotta push."